Thing is, natural gas isn’t really the answer. And Pickens is really pushing it as he stands to make lots of money off of natural gas.
Hydrogen is a much more practical solution, IMHO.
Just wait until the first hydrogen fueled vehicle explodes.
And where are the hydrogen wells or hydrogen mines? How many nuke plants would be needed to generate hydrogen from water? Or maybe how many coal and natural gas fired electric plants?
Hydrogen is a very small molecule and leaks through stuff that a larger molecule like CH4 won’t.
How can it be possible be more practical to use something that’s harder to deal with, and more expensive to obtain?
The only possible advantage might be in finding a non-compressed storage facility for the H2 that can’t be found for CH4. Such things exist, but I don’t think they are cheap.
>Hydrogen is a much more practical solution, IMHO.
Hydrogen presents a number of challenges:
1) It burns hot, REALLY hot, such that conventional engine manufacture may not be very effective.
2) Storage: under pressure or in a uranium-lattice [IIRC] are the standard ways of having a fuel tank. The former presenting safety-issues and the latter getting the “OMG! Uranium!” effect.
3) Production-transport-storage, like petrol today, but a lot touchier.
I actually think that the CNG/Diesel either-or type of vehicles are a good idea. Biodiesel in particular is a better bet than ethanol, IMO, because it can be produced from byproducts of our food industry from fast-food joints to meat-chop-shops [as well as other industries, I’d wager] and doesn’t consume a lot of food-stuffs that would go to either people or animals AND all it requires in addition to almost any diesel engine is the addition of a fuel-filter.
Regarding electrics it seems to be a waste until you get some cheap-and-reliable production going... Solar just isn’t there; it would take solar panels of 90+% efficiency rate to even be feasible as a [mass-market] power source. Nuclear though, are incredibly good deals energy-production-wise.
Um, ok, I’m done rambling.
Except for one teeny inconvenient reality.
The physical laws of our universe have yet to allow a practical way to produce hydrogen, using less energy than what is available for the hydrogen to deliver.
We have not yet met the Hydrogen Fairy.
Nuclear energy comes close but the energy neurotics are still very much in charge.